Gremlins in Suburbia?

She woke to a sound not at all unlike the screaming of a victim about to meet their demise in a bad Slasher B-movie. Turns out it was the doorbell, a service man stood outside the fortress of the front door. He was not expected, but she allowed his entry anyway.

Still shaken from the forgotten dream she'd been having seconds earlier, she heard the familiar swishing sound of the dishwasher. Odd, she thought, I ran the dishes last night. It felt like Sunday. But other evidence pointed to a weekday. My phone. I'll check my phone. Siri always knows what day it is. After confirming it was actually Tuesday, she turned on the coffee maker hoping for the clarity that caffeine brings. 

Somewhere in the middle of her second cup out on the back deck, she heard a real blood-curdling scream in the distance. Armed with the reality that she was a slow runner and still not wake enough to be of any real assistance, she waited for the screaming to stop or the sound of police sirens.

To be continued ...

Drawing in my PJs

So it snowed last night and didn't get any warmer than 13°. I made like a hermit and stayed in my pajamas all day and it felt good, I'm not apologizing. My productive day included:

• Finished watching Season 1 of Hannibal. If you're a fan of the Thomas Harris series and you missed any of this---all I can say is you'd be doing yourself a big favor by watching the DVD series. I got mine for about $25 on Amazon. It was one of my favorite new shows. 
• Cooked dinner
• and I drew this:

I have one question that I'm not sure I want the answer to: Is this it, the end of the series? Please say no NBC! Do you know?

TTFN,

Joanne

HaPpY NeW YeAr!

Hello 2014. I am cold, yet optimistic and absolutely certain that you can out-do 2013 and definitely 2012. I am going to keep the "1st week of January's To-Do List" aka Resolutions simple and doable.

Resolutions:

• Read
• Draw
• Feed my creativity
• Eat a little less ice cream
• Hug everybody Much, Much More

That's it. If this is your first time here, welcome, hit the Follow or Share button and join me again. Today, I'm sharing a ZIA (Zentangle Inspired Art) stack. Besides photography, this is my newest form of expressing my creativity. 

Blessings, 

Joanne

July 4 - Independence Day Part I

For starters, it's 95 degrees outside. An annual tradition of the hottest day of the year-so far. The bombs have been bursting for a few hours now. All that accomplished was I couldn't take my nap and the cat got scared early and came in the house.

The children decided that $240+ wasn't enough to spend on blowing shit up, so they made another run to the farworks stand. I decided that 2:30pm was late enough-I'd better make the potato salad.

The new neighbors on the next street I mentioned earlier (post) only shot off one "Big One"last night. So, that $2K of goods is still intact (until tonight).

I'm logging off now. We're cooking chicken and brats. I've never cooked "brats" before, but I heard someone say something about boiling them first. I'm must research on the mighty web.

BOOM! Let the fun begin!

For over 2 weeks now the sparkling & crashing booms have bombarded the evening sky in suburban Kansas City. Some might say the folks are just "testing their wares". I know better, they're really just warming up!

Around 9pm (Sunday- July 1) we (Dennis & I) went out on the deck to watch the fireflies and the 3 or 4 neighbors warming up. We were NOT disappointed. I have no idea what most of the 'far crackers' are called other than:Roman Candles, bottle rockets, sparklers, Black Cats, those wicked little Lady Fingers. That's it I think--nope! I remember "snakes" those nasty black ashy things you light on the ground AND (my favorite) - SMOKE BOMBS! As I was saying...we were watching the neighbors burn up some of their hard earned $$ when somebody on the street behind our house let off this AMAZING wonderment of sound and lights. It spit out 3 big bursts of rat ta tat tats- sounded JUST like a machine gun! Accompanying the machine gun were these wonderful syncronized bursts of white and red light action. This was KICK ASS!

Never seen one of these before-I had to get the name of this new sparkly, so that WE could get one- natch! So I jump into my flip-flops and make my way around the block to find out what this thing is called. To my surprise, there are no kids outside, no teenage boys, just a man & woman. I announced myself as I approached and compliment them on their far crackerz. I learn they are new in the 'hood, they have 5 kids between them, none of which were home, AND they have approximately $2000 ---I said TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS worth of FIRE WORKS! AND we are SO INVITED to come over and (thank you Jesus) watch!

Now-let me clarify one thing folks, we are NOT loaded. I mean, our neighborhood is nice, but not that nice. As it turns out, this woman's brother owns several fireworks stands. I wish I had useful relative. BTW - the cracker was called One Heck of a Firework, and that's exactly what it was.

Stay tuned